Modern websites have a legitimate reason to push a lot of data to your browser that it retains for future sessions. This can vary from a browser “cookie” that maintains a session for a short period of time to other identifiers and even databases that are pulled up, but only when you visit the site again.

This can snowball into “cruft,” a catchall term for digital code you don’t want. In particular, I see a problem with it in Safari, and have a way to troubleshoot and fix it.

You’ll realize something is amiss is when you visit a website you use routinely and receive an odd error. You try closing windows, quitting the browser, even restarting your Mac, and the problem persists. My credit-union site, for instance, will throw up a server error that says my headers are too long and malformed. Thank you very much, but my headers are just fine!

Sometimes macOS tries to help you by not letting you carry out actions that would break the system or software you’re using. There are extra levels of warnings available that you might choose to turn off or bypass.

When you have files in the Trash, select Finder > Empty Trash prompts you as to whether you really meant to empty the trash. You click Empty Trash to proceed. Holding down Option when selecting Finder > Empty Trash bypasses the warning. (You can also press Command-Option-Shift-Delete to bypass it.)

IDG

macOS prompts you when you try to delete items using Option plus Finder > Empty Trash.

Unicode is a massive, sprawling effort that pairs a number to every unique character in a language, every punctuation mark, every math symbol, and much more. And nearly all of it is available within macOS—but not always easy to find.

There’s a semi-hidden way to access special symbol sets in Unicode, and a somewhat obscure method of searching for specific symbols across all of macOS’s included Unicode characters.

First, open the Keyboard preference pane and make sure that “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar” is checked. Now, in the menu bar, click the tiny palette that has a command (⌘) key in it and select Show Emoji & Symbols. The Character Viewer that appears shows emoji by default, and with an input cursor in any app or form field that lets you type in text, you can double click emoji to insert them or drag them into a document.

You're not required to use an iPhone with iTunes in macOS and Windows, but plenty of people still plug in to a computer via USB and rely on Apple’s music-management software to handle syncing, updates, and backups.

But what to do if you plug in and you see a message that says, “iTunes could not connect to this iPhone. You do not have permission.”

You’d think very reasonably that this would have something to do with whether your iPhone was unlocked in just the right way. Apple added a feature in iOS 11.4 to deter USB-based hacking of iPhones. The USB Restricted Mode feature prevents access to an iPhone’s data if it’s enabled and it’s been more than an hour since the last time the phone was unlocked.

iCloud Photos requires the use of Photos in iOS or macOS to sync images across all the devices with which you’re logged into the same iCloud account, as well as uploading them at full resolution to the central iCloud servers, where you can access them at iCloud.com.

But what if you have an out-of-date Mac, don’t want to convert an iPhoto library to Photos, or otherwise can’t get yourself in a position in which you can use the latest tools? For instance, some people have shifted entirely to using an iPad, but an iPad is not an effective way to upload an old iPhoto or newer Photos library to iCloud.

There’s a workaround, so long as you know someone with a Mac that you can use temporarily and they’re willing to set you up with an account. You can transfer your old Mac-based library to iCloud Photos, and then continue to use it solely via iOS and iCloud.com.

Mac 911 is a place you can come with no judgement, even if you managed to erase your Mac’s startup disk and you’re not sure what to do next. It happens! (In the spirit of confession, I managed to delete the core operating system off my first Unix system in 1994, because I thought, “This file takes up too much space!”)

Fortunately, Apple has you covered with macOS Recovery. You may know this tool, introduced way back in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, as a way to start up your computer to run Disk Utility without having your startup drive mounted, to reinstall macOS, and for a number of other technical purposes.

macOS Recovery occupies a small, invisible partition on your startup drive, and lives quietly there until you need it. But what happens if you erase the entire drive, including this hidden partition?

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iPhone/iPadiOSPhotographyIf you can’t get macOS Mail to work after upgrading to two-factor authentication, here’s a way to fix itWed, 23 Jan 2019 05:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

I highly recommend Apple’s two-factor authentication (2FA) for your Apple ID and associated iCloud services as a way to reduce the threat of a remote hijack of your account. (Although note that you can’t turn 2FA off once you enable it.) However, depending on how you’ve used iCloud in the past, you might run up against a quirk: You can’t get Mail in macOS to work after upgrading to 2FA.

Apple automates the inclusion of your iCloud email account in Mail for macOS through a few system components. If you’re logged into your iCloud account via the iCloud preference pane, then that pane effectively manages Mail accounts. The Internet Accounts preference pane also lists iCloud connections along with other accounts you’ve set up at major services like Google and other companies for email and other services.

In 2010, Apple started to release Macs with solid-state drives (SSDs) that used a socket and—with varying amounts of effort—could be removed and upgraded by the owner or by an Apple or third-party technician. But starting in 2016, nearly every Mac released has the SSD soldered directly to the motherboard. The iMac is a notable exception, but see the note at the end of this article.

If you have a Mac of the proper vintage, it can be from vanishingly easy to exceedingly difficult to get the “blade”-style SSD out of the Mac and replace it with a higher-capacity model. These blades plug into a slot, something like RAM but with a narrower connector. Apple developed multiple, proprietary connectors across its use of blade SSDs. In my wife’s recently purchased 2014 MacBook Pro, nothing is easily serviceable except for the SSD, which is a cinch to access, remove, and replace.

A mysterious whirring and grinding noise from his late-model AirPort Extreme Base Station disturbed one Macworld reader. Why would it make such a sound? He hadn’t turned it on for a year, but was about to reactivate it with a new broadband connection.

My reply: The polite verbal equivalent of a shrug, because—I wrote—there’s no fan in an AirPort Express, and only a Time Capsule has a hard drive. Time Capsule drives certainly fail, like any spinning storage media, but the grinding described would surely have meant the drive was on its way to failure, if not already destroyed.

But your faithful Mac 911 columnist failed to do his research. I own a newer AirPort Extreme—one of the “crackerbox” models that looks like a gleaming white micro-tower. It’s never made a peep. I even thought I’d even looked at pictures of the insides of this version from Apple’s now-discontinued series of routers.

The Mac App Store sometimes throws out odd errors when you try to download and install software, errors that lack information on Apple’s support pages. These seem to come up most often with Apple’s own software, especially the five free apps (GarageBand, iMovie, Keynote, Numbers, and Pages) that require an Apple ID, but no prior purchase.

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MacsMacOS HintsmacOSMac AppsSoftwareWhat you get when you export Calendar and Reminders in macOS, and how to use those filesWed, 16 Jan 2019 05:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

The Calendar and Reminders apps in macOS let you create backups through an export option. In Calendar, you can select File > Export > Export or Export > CalendarArchive. Reminders lets you select File > Export. The exported files can used for recovery or imported into other apps and systems.

What’s the difference between these options, and why select one over another? All the options produce some variation on an ICS file, a standard calendar format supported by Apple, Google, and Microsoft, among others.

The export in Reminders produces a single ICS file that contains all to-do items you’ve ever set and never deleted when complete, as well as all active items.

Select a particular calendar in the Calendar’s left sidebar and then choose File > Export > Export and an ICS file containing all that calendar’s associated events will be exported, past and future. This file doesn’t include reminders that are associated with that calendar, however.

Choose File > Export > Calendar Archive, and the Calendar app produces an ICBU file. This is a macOS package (a folder that acts like a file) that contains the entire structure of all calendars and their events as well as all reminders, all in ICS format. Apple highlights that by naming the export “Calendars and Reminders” plus the current date and time.

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The splayed out contents of the ICBU package file, which is full of folders of ICS files.

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macOSMacOS HintsProductivity SoftwareMacsStuck in macOS Recovery with a language you don’t speak? Here’s what you can do to fix thisTue, 15 Jan 2019 05:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

When you start up a Mac while holding down Command-R on the keyboard, the Mac boots into macOS Recovery. In this mode, you can run Disk Utility, access the command-line Terminal app, and reinstall the operating system. But what do you do if you restart your Mac into Recovery mode and a language appears other than one you know?

This doesn’t seem to happen at random, but it can occur when you’ve purchased a computer from someone who installed the system using another language, which can remain in place in the Recovery partition, a separately organized part of your startup drive.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to resolve this.

Choose the third menu from the left, which is labeled File when in English, and pick the first option, which is labeled Change Language in English. You should be able to select the language you want.

Launch Terminal, which is in the fifth menu from the left, labeled Utilities in English. The apps have icons next to them, and Terminal is a little rectangle with a prompt in it. After Terminal launches, type sudo languagesetup and press Return. You can then select the language to use.

If you have a Keyboard menu at the far right of the screen, you can select the one with a tiny U.S. flag to switch to English.

If all else fails, you can reinstall macOS by restarting your Mac and then holding down Command-Option-R. This will re-download installation files and prompt you for a language choice, while also upgrading the Recovery partition. It won’t overwrite your hard drive, but installs in place the latest version of macOS that works on your computer.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Curtis.

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MacsmacOSMacOS HintsThe most important thing to do if your Mac has a Fusion Drive: Back up your dataFri, 11 Jan 2019 04:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

SSDs (solid-state drives) offer extremely reliable, fast, and consistent performance over many, many years. They aren’t subject to problems that can harm even the best-designed modern hard disk drives (HDDs): exposure to magnetic fields or the failure of moving parts inside the drives.

But SSDs remain expensive many years after they first appeared. Nearly all other aspects of computation—from processors to RAM to LCD displays—have dropped dramatically in price while improving in quality and performance year after and year. SSDs initially followed that curve, especially for lower-capacity drives, but tapered way off. The cost of manufacturing higher-capacity memory chips used in SSDs hasn’t dropped much in recent years.

This past Christmas, my kids received new Mac laptops. We managed to keep their previous computers working for seven years, but these new Macs will see my kids through to college and maybe beyond. New Macs meant that we had to move all their files from the older computers to the new ones.

The old machines both had macOS High Sierra installed, and the new ones have the current macOS, Mojave. Following Apple’s instructions, I started migration on both older systems to both newer ones. (It made for a lot of smiles and laughs as family members passed through the room with four Macs all chugging away at once.)

Both computers gave errors at the end of multi-hour migrations, though one pair of computers appeared to have fully transferred data. The other pair did not; it seemed to have transferred apps and system preferences, but left out the main user. This may have been due to that user having parental controls set, though Migration Assistant doesn’t warn of that being a problem, nor is there a mention in any support notes from Apple.

Added in iOS 9, Wi-Fi Assist recognizes when you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, but have a poor or erratic signal. When this happens, Wi-Fi Assist kicks over automatically to cellular for foreground apps to keep data flowing. This feature is enabled by default.

Wi-Fi Assist automatically excludes third-party audio and video streaming, and doesn’t relay data from apps working in the background. Nonetheless, some users wound up with surprising cellular bills when they thought they were on Wi-Fi networks—it turned out Wi-Fi Assist used cellular data because the Wi-Fi connections were marginal. (U.S. carriers have largely switched to a fixed or flexible monthly maximum after which your cellular data rate is throttled to a very slow speed, so surprise bills are less likely.)

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iOSiPhone/iPadiPhoneCan’t figure out how to type a character on a Mac? It’s time for the virtual keyboardWed, 02 Jan 2019 04:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

As a long-time Mac user, I once had to rely on Key Caps, an early Mac helper that would show you where special characters hid on a keyboard. Holding down Option and Shift-Option would reveal the secrets of π and ‰ and accent marks.

That feature never disappeared, though it did recede from view, and was renamed Keyboard Viewer. You may rarely need it—except when you’re trying to type a key that your keyboard doesn’t allow or you can’t find.

What if you need more storage space on your Mac, but upgrades are impossible or too expensive, or an externally connected drive won’t do? The SD Card slot found in many older and some newer Macs is worth looking at as an option.

In recent years, Apple has shifted from Macs that can have internal storage upgraded to higher capacities or from a hard disk drive (HDD) to an SSD—though sometimes with a fair amount of difficulty—to storage that can’t be modified after purchase.

Even on Macs that offer some degree of drive upgradability, you may still feel stung by SSD prices. My wife recently acquired a mid-2014 MacBook Pro with an easily swappable 500GB SSD module. But upgrading to 1TB? The price tag is over $400. (SSD modules that work with other computers can be as little as $150 for the same capacity, but those aren’t compatible with Apple’s slot.)

The Mac 911 mailbag has recently included a number of letters about missing letters—people either can’t type or encounter strange keyboard problems or other oddities.

One email began, “I am cotactig you because my Mac Book Pro keyboard has decided it does ot like to type the letter that appears betwee L ad M o the keyboard.” (Sadly, the writer even had an “n” in her name.)

These kind of keyboard problems are easy to diagnose, because Apple’s had a spate of problems with its MacBook and MacBook Pro models. It chose a new keyboard design starting with the 2015 12-inch MacBook, and then brought to the 2016 overhaul to the MacBook Pro line. Its revised its design once, but not with much improvement.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides an effective way to deter people from hijacking an online account. With 2FA, you supplement a password with something else—typically you enter a code that’s sent via a text message. The second factor means someone has to know both your password and have access to something you own—a phone number, a phone, or a computer—and dramatically reduces your exposure when password breaches inevitably happen.

Apple added 2FA for Apple IDs a few releases ago, an upgrade from its hastily constructed two-step verification, which it created after high-publicity cracks using social engineering (i.e., guessing and phishing) of its iCloud service.

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SecurityCloud & ServicesmacOSiOSMacOS HintsHow to set up a Mac and macOS to take advantage of an SSD and external storage setup Thu, 20 Dec 2018 05:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

While they offer fast speeds, solid-state drives (SSDs) are still pricey, and your costs can suddenly increase if you want to boost the storage when buying a Mac mini or an iMac. However, both Macs support high-performance USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3, and you can use this help offset the costs of getting more storage.

If the prices for high-capacity SSD upgrades for the Mac mini and iMac make you balk, you can get a more affordable external USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3 hard drive. Then, to get the most out of the speed of the SSD in the Mac mini or iMac, you can split your system and apps to one drive, and your user files to another.

With a Mac mini, the two standard configurations come with a 128GB or 256GB SSD, which you use to storage macOS. Then you attach a high-capacity external drive (SSD, hybrid, or even a fast hard drive) for your user files, which would include music and photos.

Apple synthesizes a lot of geographic data to produce the streets, features, and labels on its maps. The Maps app in iOS and macOS is exhaustive, but not always correct.

(This is contrary to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which maintains, “where it is inaccurate it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it’s always reality that’s got it wrong.”)

If you find an errant label, such as your city or region mislabeled, an incorrect street name, or other details, Apple does let you report it, though you may have not realized you could.

How to Report an Issue in iOS Maps

In Maps for iOS, tap the info (i in a circle) button in any view, then tap Report an Issue. You can pick the kind of issue you want, like Map Labels, select the errant data from a map that appears, tap Next, and finally fill out a description of what’s wrong.

After Apple received a spate of bad publicity about how it chose to throttle older iPhones with degraded batteries, it apologized and offered a battery replacement program for many phones at reduced cost. But it also pledged to improve how it disclosed to users the state of their battery.

It’s a little hidden, as you have to launch Settings and then tap Battery to see monitoring details. Tap Battery Health, and you see two important stats.

Maximum Capacity measures the peak charge that the battery can hold. (Mine is currently 91 percent after about 14 months of solid use.) It’s normal for this to decline slowly over a period of time, and decline faster the more frequently you run through a charge on your phone.

It’s easy to think that an iOS backup would include all the personal data stored on your iPhone or iPad. But Apple explains in a support page that some things aren’t copied off your phone, because they’re stored elsewhere. This includes “data stored in other cloud services, like Gmail and Exchange mail.”

What if you download messages from an email account to your iOS device and they’re deleted from the server? Those emails are gone for good when your iPhone or iPad is restored from backup or dies. Apple doesn’t mention this in the support note or elsewhere, even though it can affect people who store certain messages locally on their devices instead of synced with a mail server.

The Mac App Store (MAS) registers downloaded apps—paid and free—to the Apple ID associated with the store at the time of download. Most people only ever log in with a single Apple ID for app purchases or retrievals, and thus all apps installed on their Macs remain correctly licensed to that Apple ID.

However, it’s possible even using a single Apple ID that you will see an error when you attempt to update certain apps that reads, “Update Unavailable with This Apple ID.” This seems to happen commonly with Apple’s productivity apps: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

The message goes on to say, “This update is not available for this Apple ID either because it was bought by a different user or the item was refunded or canceled.” If none of those conditions are true, you may still see the error in some readers’ (and my family’s) experience. (Why does this happen? Apple hasn’t provided any insight.)

When migrating from one iOS device to another, iCloud provides continuity. If you’ve already set up a target device and logged into iCloud with the same Apple ID as on the device from which you’re migrating, you don’t lose anything synced with iCloud in the process.

The only thing to watch out for is information you’ve created uniquely on the target device that isn’t stored in the cloud, but you believe is stored on the device itself. Depending on the app, you need to make sure to back that data up.

That can include photos if you’re not using iCloud Photos (formerly iCloud Photo Library), which automatically syncs all your media through iCloud and across iOS devices and Macs logged into the same account. With that feature off, a target device on which you’ve captured or stored any images or videos that you haven’t imported into Photos (or iPhoto) will have all this new media deleted when you restore from another device.

Ever have a problem on your Mac, where you can’t type the letters and numbers 7, 8, 9, U, I, O, J, K, L, and M—and maybe some others?

It’s probably Mouse Keys at play, an accessibility feature in macOS that mimics an old IBM-style keypad feature.

Num Lock and its computer history

Keyboards still have vestiges of their origins on typewriters and mechanical calculators. We mostly ignore those in our day-to-day work. The Shift key, originally meant to literally raise a set of typebars in a typewriter, merely shifts among upper and lower case. And you know better than to press Caps Lock when entering passwords—Apple even alerts you when you have it accidentally enabled.

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MacsKeyboardsInput DevicesmacOSMacOS HintsWhy you should use a VPN on a public Wi-Fi networkFri, 30 Nov 2018 05:00:00 -0800Glenn FleishmanGlenn Fleishman

When you connect to a free or paid public Wi-Fi network, you may notice that some redirection takes place. Instead of taking you to a website you intended to visit or retrieving your email, Apple cleverly inserts a Wi-Fi portal pop-up or screen in both iOS and macOS. On that screen, you can login or agree to terms and conditions for use of the network and proceed.

Apple makes this portal page appear when your iPhone, iPad, or Mac can’t reach an Apple site directly after you joined that network. The operating system understands that something is standing in your way, and it’s almost always a portal page that Apple can repackage to make it easier for you to spot.

iCloud storage isn’t expensive, especially compared to Apple’s competitors. If you use iCloud Photos (the new name for iCloud Photo Library), it’s easy to exceed the 5GB of free storage included with iCloud and then outstrip the 50GB ($1 a month)—and the 200 GB tier ($3 a month).

For folks paying for iCloud storage, it might be tempting to cut out those recurring subscriptions and just store media locally—typically on a Mac. But take care in particular if you’re using iCloud Photos: Downgrading your storage plan doesn’t immediately delete photos and videos, but it does make some of them inaccessible.

Notifications are one of iOS’s best features, letting apps and the iOS system alert you about important updates: a new episode of a show is available, a new text has arrived, your Lyft is on its way, and more. But you can wind up with apps that either notify you too often, or change their notification pattern after you’ve given permission.

You can dive into Settings > Notifications, swipe to find the app, and adjust settings there. But Apple introduced a nifty way in iOS 12 to change notification settings from within a lock screen alert.